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Talk:Divide... and Conquer
Name Why does this name have a special character in it rather than having it in easy to find form with three dots? And why the hell don't you two talk to each other on talk pages rather than reverting each others' edits and protecting the damned page? Seriously. Talk a bit. -- sulfur 01:42, January 28, 2012 (UTC) :My entire reasoning behind the protection - i only get responses from Doug about a quarter of the time i ask him a question. :Special characters in article titles could be discussed, all i get is that there was a problem with trying this one, but no idea what the problem is. :So what is it? -- Captain MKB 01:45, January 28, 2012 (UTC) ::The ellipsis in the title uses the single character form "…" rather three full stops in a row, "...". A program like Word will autocorrect them when typed, which is probably how this came about. (It also turns straight apostrophes and quotes to curly or angled forms.) -- BadCatMan 02:14, January 28, 2012 (UTC) :Actually this came about from a typography seminar I attended, where the ellipsis as a unique character was identified as the correct typography to use in composition (rather than three full stops in a row)... my edit was experimental, yes, as this is not the norm for this wiki, but I expected it to generate discussion rather than be blindly reverted. -- Captain MKB 02:18, January 28, 2012 (UTC) ::I apologize for not talking about why I edited the page. I guess I just assumed that he would come to realize that the change was not the norm for the wiki, just as using straight apostrophes and quotes was fairly common knowledge. I will try not to be so silent about my changes in the future. Doug86 02:33, January 28, 2012 (UTC) ::If it's a discussion you want, Mike, there's always the forums. :) I agree that it's probably more appropriate. I've started trying to use en dashes and em dashes where appropriate. Unfortunately, special characters are rarely practical in more code-based text (article titles) or where you might expect laypeople to type them (search), as not everyone knows or wants to scour Character Map (I have it as shortcut and open all day anyway, ahem). Something like Earth-Romulan War should be "Earth–Romulan War" but that would be hard to use for most readers and editors. ::In this case, both versions of the ellipsis look identical in the finished product anyway (at least, they do to me). -- BadCatMan 02:38, January 28, 2012 (UTC) :::Actually, common styles (i.e. Chicago) recommends a hyphen for the example you just gave, not the en dash - but you see the point. :::barring cases like this, where we have a strong moderating influence like Sulfur, the forums here are sometimes an absolute shit-show. I don't want to spend my nights jumping into something like that. Plus I figured I'd try it and see how it worked before suggesting it to others, regardless... :::We have the added problem of compatibility issues so this seems more and more like a dead end for a possibility in improving article titles. In addition, we have a solid basis of typesetting problems in the source material (Operation -- Annihilate! for example). Plus Sulfur seems to think it creates a problem being "easy to find", which I don't actually understand. It's the article that starts with "divide" and then has some other shit after it. Easy to find, either way. -- Captain MKB 02:55, January 28, 2012 (UTC)